U. S. Radio (Jan-Dec 1961)

report on Agency Man Looks at Headaches acing Fm Medium Today joe Gans, president <>( his own rank and It agency, airs his personal ■'clings about sonic fm problems, 'or full details see Feb. u. s. fm, p. 3) .ike i he weather, everybody talks bout fm, but nobody or almost noody does anything about it. I find it no longer amusing, for exmple, to hear people say they listen o fm because they enjoy the backround music and are not bothered i tli commercials. Fm desperately needs more commercials! But even more than that, now needs more — much more — !ian merely a good music format, m must create the desire in peo ple to turn to it for the kind of listening they cannot find readily available elsewhere. It must stari identifying itself with all the demands £01 cultural expansion and entertainment made on it by its selective but ever-expanding audience. Fm's often-made claim to a small, uniquely selective audience is no longer valid. More am stations than ever before are switching to the socalled good music format. The fm station that persists in catering to the relatively insignificant percentage of its audience which is looking for unobtrusive music to do things by will soon discover the game is not worth the candle. m Group Conducts Study o Probe Listener Characteristics For full details see Feb. u.s. fm, 6) ix fm stations in the Sacramento /alley area of Northern California nake up the membership of the Sacamento Valley Fm Broadcasters SVFMB) , founded "for the general >etterment of fm." At two separate events, the Califorlia State Fair and the Sacramento tereo Hi-Fi Show, the SVFMB conucted surveys on the age, income, ducation, listening habits and musial preference of fm set owners. The ame questionnaire was utilized at >oth events. In the age category, persons forming the 25-35 year age group accountd for nearly 29 percent of the total isteners, with the 36-45 age group oming in for a close second at ap)roximate!y 25 percent, according to the survey. Except for those in the five digit income bracket (around 12 per cent) income appeared to have little effect on listenership. Each of the four brackets from under 54,000 to the §10,000 level accounted for about 20 to 25 percent of listenership. Most fm listeners, the survey indicates, have had some college with over 30 percent holding degrees. Over 25 percent of the listeners stated that they listen to fm from two to three hours a day. The 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. time slot proved to be most popular with all listeners. Over 60 per cent tuned in during these hours, states SVFMB. And, finally, in the area of musical preference, symphonic music took first place, light concert second and sacred music was third in popularity. Least preferred was opera and dixie land. • • • 7. S. RADIO February 1961 ( Cont'd from p. 51) Mr. White slates, "communicate to them a point oi view; what iis values are and what il stands lor." I he CRA stud) indicates thai there are approximately three stations in the Chicago area thai have established a relationship with the public lo the point thai they can "almost be personified by the listeners." Develop Character In order to develop a specific chaiacter that will influence its audience . il is important for the station to realize that the listener is a human being and not, as Mr. While explains, "merely a listening machine." Stations that do realize this and make it their programming responsibility, he notes, "can be imagined by listeners almost as a person, with actual tastes and beliefs, providing companionship even when they program so-called 'background' music." One theory developed by the Creative Research Associates was that of the automatic timeout. "Attention," according to Mr. White, "is a function of the value derived. A member of any station audience can listen 24 hours a day if he feels he is getting value for his attention. Conversely, the tolerance for radio can be less than two minutes, if the listener feels he is getting no value. Automatic timeout, then, occurs at the point where the listener feels he is paying too much attention for the value derived from radio." This is visually demonstrated by CRA with the use of a steadily declining graph line of "pleasure of interest response." Simultaneously, the line indicating the amount of "effort required" on the part of the listener to extract that pleasure or information will rise in proportion lo the declining line. When these two lines converge, automatic tuneout occurs; that is, the listener is no longer willing to put forth the effort for a full response to what is being broadcast, according to CRA. This factor is, in large, determined by the listener's expectation of a radio's obligation to them. Mr. White explains that. "Listeners feel strongly that if radio is a commercial medium, if it relates to them as potential customers of advertised products, it owes them two things — entertainment and information. Failure of stations to provide (Cont'd on p. 60) 59